Atlanta Braves: How long should the leash be for Dansby Swanson in 2019?

Clutch Hitting

We need to first establish what we’re working with here. Swanson has two full seasons with the Atlanta Braves (2018 and 2017). In 2016 he only played in 38 games. So before we start diving into his stats and splits, we need to make sure we have the proper perspective.

With Swanson’s total of 318 games played, we essentially have two seasons of numbers to analyze. But nevertheless, Swanson started in 2016.

First, lets look at something simple – leverage. I don’t want to go to deep in this, but there are three different leverages in a baseball game: low leverage, medium leverage and high leverage. The meaning of these terms are pretty much exactly what they seem.

We are going to look at High Leverage because it’s obviously more important when trying to see just how much of an impact the player has in the game. A high leverage situation can be later in the game or come at a pivotal time during the game (hitting a home run when down by a run). This is essentially at a time when the game is capable of swinging either way.

Dansby Swanson has had some success during this situation, which is great! In 247 plate appearances, Swanson has a .906 OPS in high leverage situations.

This consists of a .329 batting average, seven home runs, and 14 doubles. Not bad at all. So in a sense, you could say that Swanson is an above-average hitter in important parts of the game.

Now, let’s add a little to it. Let’s look at how Swanson does, in his Braves’ career, when the leverage is high and medium – so a game’s highest win-swing and a pretty normal win-swing. Plus, let’s add late-game situations to it (seventh-inning and beyond).

Swanson is looking even better here, with a .970 OPS in 177 plate appearances. When it’s late in the game and the win-swing is normal to high, Swanson has hit .372 with five homers and 29 RBI. He’s getting on base at a .425 clip and has a slugging percentage of .545.

Those are great numbers and show that Swanson does have a unique skill. While the sample size is small, an argument can be made that Swanson’s entire career is a small sample. Remember he only has two full seasons of numbers.

Defense

Another aspect of Swanson’s game has been his defense. While it has trended up-and-down throughout his time with the Braves, I think it has been pretty commonly stated that his defense is above-average overall.

Swanson has made 36 errors in his career with the Braves (six in 2016, 20 in 2017 and 10 in 2018). As you can see, up-and-down.

In today’s big push for sabermetrics, the defensive side of advanced-metrics has mostly lagged. It’s just too hard to perfectly quantify a player’s skill on defense with the numerous variables at play. There is something that Fangraphs provides, called UZR/150 (ultimate zone rate per 150). Here is Fangraphs definition of the term:

"The number of runs above or below average a fielder is, per 150 defensive games."

In 2016 and 2017, Swanson had negative ratings in UZR/150, but in 2018 he finished with a UZR/150 of 5.9. Now remember Swanson only played in a little over 30 games in 2016, and while this metric does take in sample-size to an extent – a sample of games that small is generally more unreliable.

With all three seasons averaged out, Swanson has a career rating of 0.9. Since the 2017 season Swanson has the eighth-best UZR/150 among all shortstops in MLB, at 1.4. He ranks right in between Oakland’s Marcus Semien and Texas Rangers Elvis Andrus.

Summary

Dansby Swanson has provided top-ten defense for the Braves in his short career. He also has shown that he can come through at the plate in situations where the team needs something good to happen.

These two aspects of Swanson’s game that I have covered are most likely not the only ones that he has positively contributed in, but these are the two that I feel are the most important.

One other attribute that Swanson provides – and I think this is pretty well agreed upon regardless of your opinion on his actual baseball skills – is that he is extremely passionate when he plays.

Passion and “heart” are not stats that we can look up on Fangraphs or Baseball Reference, but it is something that can be just as important during the course of a 162-game season.